Leading the G.O.P. Vanguard Against the Bailout

Since being elected to the House in 2002, Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, has loudly called for cutting spending and taxes — not surprising for a protégé of former Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas, who was Mr. Hensarling’s professor at Texas A&M University.

During his first term in the House, Mr. Hensarling, who represents part of Dallas and some of its suburbs, co-founded the “Washington Waste Watchers,” which sought to eradicate abuse, fraud and waste in government. Mr. Hensarling has also proposed a constitutional amendment that would limit the growth in federal spending to the rate of economic growth.

He says the sponsors of pet projects added to appropriation bills should be publicly identified, to make members think twice before submitting requests. Now the chairman of the Republican Study Committee — a group he has called the “keeper of the conservative flame” — Mr. Hensarling, 51, urged Republicans to return to their conservative roots after they lost the House and Senate in 2006.

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Representative Jeb HensarlingCredit
Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

“Like mosquitoes in a nudist colony,” he said after the 2006 elections, “Republicans will have more than enough opportunities to show the voters we deserve our conservative brand back.”

Now finishing his fourth term in the House, Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, is widely seen as a rising star both among conservatives and in the Republican Party. His name was one of those floated as a potential running mate for Senator John McCain.

Mr. Cantor, 45, whose political base is in the Richmond area, was appointed chief deputy whip of the Republican caucus after just two years in Congress. He is one of his party’s premier fund-raisers, having raised around $30 million for Republican House candidates in 2006 as head of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s “Battleground” program.

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Representative Eric CantorCredit
Dennis Brack/Bloomberg News

A former real estate developer, Mr. Cantor has collected thousands of dollars in donations for his own campaigns from Wall Street giants like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, though his most consistent contributions come from companies with bases in Virginia, like Dominion Resources and Philip Morris USA.

A fiscal conservative like the other members of the trio, Mr. Cantor has displayed some sharp elbows while in Congress. He was called a “Bush attack dog” in 2004, and he harshly criticized Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, for visiting Syria in 2007 and meeting the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad.

Representative Paul Ryan

Republican of Wisconsin

Once among the youngest members of Congress, Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and now 38, became the ranking member of the House Budget Committee last year.

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Representative Paul RyanCredit
Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

From that perch, Mr. Ryan, a protégé of former Cabinet secretaries Jack F. Kemp and William J. Bennett, has fervently pushed supply-side economic theory.

He offered a plan in 2007 that would extend expiring tax cuts and called for a reformed budget process, saying the government could face bankruptcy unless it started spending less. Mr. Ryan also supported President Bush’s attempts to change Social Security by allowing recipients to invest in personal accounts.

He says he believes that the country’s health care system should be more market-driven and more competitive.

“Washington really is broken,” Mr. Ryan told a Wisconsin newspaper this year. But “nobody wants to make a bold proposal out of fear of being demagogued and attacked by the other party.”

Unlike Mr. Cantor and Mr. Hensarling, whose districts are reliably Republican, Mr. Ryan’s district, which stretches from the Milwaukee suburbs to the Illinois border, gave George W. Bush only 54 percent of the vote in 2004. Still, Mr. Ryan has won more than 62 percent of the vote in each of his re-election campaigns.

Reporting by Bernie Becker.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Leading the G.O.P. Vanguard Against the Bailout. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe